It’s been quite the hectic offseason for USC women’s basketball.
Head coach Lindsay Gottlieb gave birth to her second child, a girl named Reese, on October 15. As a result, Gottlieb has missed a large portion of the team’s preseason, including its exhibition game last Sunday.
Gottlieb stayed around the team as long as possible, though, during a pivotal point of the team’s preparation for the upcoming season.
“I thought Coach G was actually going to give birth in practice,” sophomore forward Rayah Marshall said during Pac-12 Women’s Basketball Media Day last week. “She did not want to leave us, and I was so grateful for that.”
In her absence, associate head coach Beth Burns stepped up as interim head coach for Sunday’s exhibition game against Cal State Los Angeles, which USC comfortably won 87-48.
Burns was the associate head coach at USC from 2014 to 2017 and returned this June to Los Angeles after a stint at Louisville. As San Diego State’s winningest coach in its history, Burns said she’s always appreciated USC’s program – both up close and from afar.
“I have been fighting on for a long time … I think this is one of the best universities in the world, but we haven’t done our job on the basketball court,” Burns said. “Most importantly, I have a ton of respect for Lindsay.”
Burns, a defensive-minded coach, provides a much different energy than the more soft-spoken Gottlieb, creating a dichotomy that Marshall describes as “day and night.” But the players know that both points of view are necessary for a successful team.
“It’s definitely a balance,” junior guard Kayla Williams said. “You got to love all parts of the game — offense and defense — so that’s what we do.”
It’s clear that Williams enjoys both sides of the game, as the UC Irvine transfer was not only named to the All-Big West First Team last season, but also the Big West All-Defensive Team. In fact, something tells me that when the Anteaters were leading USC at halftime last season, Gottlieb probably thought she’d like to have their leading scorer Williams on her side sooner or later.
That takes us to the other aspect of the Trojans’ lively offseason: lots of roster turnover.
USC lost all five of its primary starters from last season, including Pac-12 Most Improved Player Jordyn Jenkins, who transferred to UTSA in April. In total, Gottlieb needed to replace a staggering 66% of the team’s minutes. She attempted to do so in the offseason primarily through the transfer portal, through which she added seven players, including Williams. When you factor in true freshman guard Aaliyah Gayles, over half the team’s 14-player roster is new.
Gayles, a five-star recruit and No. 8 ranked player in the nation in the 2022 class according to ESPN, will redshirt this season. In April, she was shot 10 times at a house party in Las Vegas but was recently cleared for basketball activities.
“Aaliyah is, from God, a miracle … She improves your day, every day. She never has a bad day,” Burns said. “Her progress is phenomenal — she’s jogging, she’s doing ball-handling with us … She is an integral part of what we do.”
Without the highly touted Gayles, Williams will have to step up and run the show as the Trojans’ point guard this year. But if Sunday’s exhibition was any indication, Williams seems ready for the role. She nearly had a triple-double, with 13 points, nine rebounds and eight assists as well as a pair of steals. However, it will be interesting to see who the USC offense flows through when Williams is on the bench, as the team doesn’t have great ball-handling options behind her.
As for the other transfers, graduate transfer forward Kadi Sissoko, who led Minnesota in rebounding last season, will try to take over the hole left by Jenkins. Sissoko has a knack for getting to and finishing efficiently at the rim, as seen in her perfect 6-for-6 start from the field in the first half Sunday. She finished with a team-high 25 points on 11-for-14 shooting.
On the wing, a group of three more transfers should all have major roles. Okako Adika, a versatile graduate transfer guard from TCU, got the start in the exhibition and filled up the stat sheet with 12 points, nine rebounds, four assists and three steals. Burns especially challenged Adika coming into that game, successfully predicting that she’d get five offensive rebounds (she had six).
“The hard thing for all these older players is everybody comes from a team where they had a role,” Burns said. “I almost had to give Okako permission to be Okako … I was just thrilled with the way that she started the game.”
The next two transfers, graduate guard Rokia Doumbia from Purdue and sophomore guard Taylor Bigby from Oregon, will be two more interesting depth pieces to keep in mind. If Bigby, a former No. 29 overall recruit and two-time Nevada Gatorade State Player of the Year in high school, reaches her potential, this team’s ceiling could see a significant rise.
The team’s final two transfers are graduate guard Destiny Littleton, who won a national title at South Carolina last season, and junior forward Koi Love from Arizona. Neither played in the exhibition, though Burns is optimistic about the statuses for both ahead of the team’s regular season opener next week. Love, who averaged over 20 points and nine rebounds per game two years ago at Vanderbilt, should take on an immediate role given the team’s lack of depth in the frontcourt.
With so many new faces, it should take some time for players to gel and learn to play on their new team. But as a newcomer, Williams feels good about the team’s chemistry so far.
“We each come in here bringing something different, a different type of experience,” Williams said. “We have a lot of older people, veterans … that just allows us to become closer as a team.”
As for the returners, guards sophomore Bella Perkins and senior Alyson Miura should take up a good amount of backcourt minutes, with both capable of playing on- or off-ball. Miura led the team in 3-pointers last season coming off the bench, but she appears likely to start this season. Burns particularly liked the way Perkins played despite shooting just 1-for-7 on Sunday, as she added six assists and four rebounds in 18 minutes.
“It was a little dicey in the middle of the second quarter. We got a little flat,” Burns said. “We changed what we were doing defensively … Bella really did a great job off the bench. People don’t appreciate that at this level — [it’s key to] get value from people who don’t start the game.”
But this team really revolves around Marshall and her continued growth entering her second season at USC. Listed as both a guard and forward, Marshall has the potential to be an A’ja Wilson or Giannis Antetokounmpo type of player for the Trojans. At 6-foot-4, she’s already a premier defensive player in the country, as she led all freshmen in the nation with 2.5 blocks per game last season; she currently holds a streak of 23 straight games with a block. Marshall also led USC in every rebounding stat, although she mostly came off the bench during her freshman season.
Her offensive game is already stellar, too, even though it still has plenty of room to grow. The 2021-22 Pac-12 All-Freshman Team member scored 11.2 points per game and ended the season with 12 straight games with at least 10 points — again, mostly coming off the bench!
Against Cal State LA, Marshall picked up where she left off at the end of last season, compiling a statline of 21 points, 15 rebounds, five blocks and two steals. She will be the focal point of the USC offense this season, and if she can establish a consistent 3-point shot, Marshall could be in the Pac-12 Player of the Year discussion. She’s that good, and she should only get better.
“For me, it’s been my tempo as a sophomore,” Marshall said about what she worked on in the offseason. “I’ve just been able to condition myself mentally, physically. I’m being consistent as far as having a go-to shot, and being a beast on rebounds.”
Still, with USC replacing so much of its roster in the offseason, the team was picked to finish ninth in both the Pac-12 preseason media and coaches polls. However, the Trojans probably have the talent to be an NCAA Tournament-caliber team if they can figure things out quickly.
“We’ve got a great group, and it’s hard for all of them, because there’s so much to learn,” Burns said. “But I appreciate that our effort is really, really high every day. We’re going to keep getting better.”
USC opens its regular season against CSU Bakersfield on November 8 at 7 p.m. at Galen Center. Gottlieb is expected to return as head coach from maternity leave for that game.